backsliding

Everything feels possible in the Spring. Hope and life start sprouting up everywhere, and even our hearts feel ready for something new. If any season were perfect for Easter's grace to come to humanity, it is now. 

---

Backsliding

Why after spring,

after being quickened and taught to sing,

knowing He has taken our death and made us green and growing,

why would we go back to winter

so willingly,

and drop so soon our little leaves and stems and fine new fruit

with so much promise,

as if the sun had never shone upon us,

living water never washed our skin?

Why do we hide again our heads and bury deep our souls

in the killing frost of sin?
---

Turning away from the source of life is about as senseless it would be to try going back to Winter after May is here. But however weary we are, however many times we have failed, however cold and hardened we have become against the light's grace, Christ will not leave us there. He is stronger even than the sun, more faithful than the seasons. Alleluia.

"If anyone is in Christ, He is a new creation. The old things have passed away; behold, new things have come." 2 Cor 5: 17

"If we are not faithful, He remains faithful, because He cannot be false to Himself." 2 Timothy 2:13

Leithart on poetry

On why we write animal poems, actually.

I like it. Here you go.

poem and pictures: growth, sanctification, spring

 

                                                    Jefferson Street 2013: from the roof

                                                  Garfield Street 2012: by the driveway

                                                North of Moscow 2014: highway ditch gold

                                                Potlatch nursery 2014: geranium explosion

                                                      First Street 2014: first flowers

                               our home 2014: borrowed branches & a favorite chair

 Backsliding

Why after spring,

after being quickened and taught to sing,

knowing He has taken our death and made us green and growing,

why would we go back to winter

so willingly,

and drop so soon our little leaves and stems and fine new fruit

with so much promise,

as if the sun had never shone upon us,

living water never washed our skin?

Why do we hide again our heads and bury deep our souls

in the killing frost of sin?

[yep, I am posting] a love poem

In a Love Red Canoe

 

There is a long canoe

   on the wide sweep of the lake,

dark red on deep blue.

 

         The woman leans laughing toward

         the man, bending gently to his oars.

 

With the sun dazzling their eyes

   they know they’ll be on this lake

the rest of their lives.

carpe diem

Living

The fire in leaf and grass
so green it seems
each summer the last summer.

The wind blowing, the leaves
shivering in the sun,
each day the last day.

A red salamander
so cold and so
easy to catch, dreamily

moves his delicate feet
and long tail. I hold
my hand open for him to go.

Each minute the last minute.

Denise Levertov

Ted Kooser, awkward poet

I do like Kooser. Simple words, sharp images, hard situations, crazy humor. This poem reminds me of the end of Ecclesiates. So vivid, too. From Flying at Night.


Uncle Adler

He had come to the age
when his health had put cardboard
in all of its windows.
The oil in his eyes was so old
it would barely light,
and his chest was a chimney
full of bees. Of it all,
he had nothing to say;
his Adam's apple hung like a ham
in a stairwell. Lawyers
encircled the farm like a fence,
and his daughters fought over
the china. Then one day
while everyone he'd ever loved
was digging in his yard,
he suddenly sucked in his breath so hard
the whole estate fell in on him.

Season of Leaves

I am actually still working on this poem, but it belongs in this season, not in the next, so here it is along with some pictures I have taken recently.

I

Before the sun

was all the way up
the front of the house pelted
by an onslaught of mad leaves
driven on a wild wind.

II

Two black birds, crows,

locked in flight of love or war,
plummet like mad whirling blades
falling from the sky, fanning outward
the pale leaves on the asphalt below.

III

This hard wood floor,

dark and lightly
dented, scattered with thin leaves:
teardrops and crescents and stemmed hearts
and the red serrated shape we associate with Canada.

 

Wife of Sysiphus

As a nerd, a lover of poetry and of the classics, a sucker for the blues, and a believer in death-and-resurrection, I appreciated this poem.

http://poems.com/poem.php?date=15630

Beginnings

It's hard to pinpoint when I started writing, or even started loving to write. There's the time my mom's great-aunt sent me boxes of her books on college english and narrative and writer's markets. There's the year my dad had us copy poems or psalms for handwriting practice, to be read in front of the family in the evening. Then there's the fact that Mom loves to write, and that I have schoolteacher ancestors, and that my sisters and brothers and I would tell one another stories as we washed the dishes every day. Writing came kind of natural.

But this is the first poem of mine that my mom saved. I was 11, and I think this was inspired by a recurring nightmare of mine about being chased up the driveway and into the house by a black bear. Don't laugh. We all have to begin somewhere.

There Is a Tree

 

There is a tree

that’s just for me.

Along came a bear

and gave me a scare!

I was up in my tree

when it saw me.

 

It gave a growl and prowled around

so I jumped down to the ground.

I ran to my house as fast as I could.

I was safe: I’d run faster than any bear would!

 

Kings pardon, but He bore our punishment

John Donne, Holy Sonnet XI

Spit in my face you Jews, and pierce my side,
Buffet, and scoff, scourge, and crucufy me,
For I have sinned, and sinned, and only he,
Who could do no iniquity, hath died:
But by my death cannot be satisfied
My sins, which pass the Jews' impiety:
They killed once an inglorious man, but I
Crucify him daily, being now glorified.
Oh let me then, his strange love still admire:
Kings pardon, but he bore our punishment.
And Jacob came clothes in vile harsh attire
But to supplant, and with gainful intent:
God clothed himself in cile man's flesh, that so
He might be weak enough to suffer woe.

Ford Raymond Tucker, in memoriam

You may lay his body in the ground today
    like a grain of wheat that has fallen,
       but what is rainfall, what is the dark of sod,
       when your life has been hid in Christ with God?
    Your son, your brother will be called
to rise up tall with eternal day,
and the Son of light will dry all tears away.

Ford (center) with 6 of  his 10 siblings at Easter

Rinsed With Gold

Rinsed with Gold, Endless, Walking the Fields

By Robert Siegel

Let this day’s air praise the Lord—
Rinsed with gold, endless, walking the fields,
Blue and bearing the clouds like censers,
Holding the sun like a single note
Running through all things, a basso profundo
Rousing the birds to an endless chorus.

Let the river throw itself down before him,
The rapids laugh and flash with his praise,
Let the lake tremble about its edges
And gather itself in one clear thought
To mirror the heavens and the reckless gulls
That swoop and rise on its glittering shores.

Let the lawn burn continually before him
A green flame, and the tree’s shadow
Sweep over it like the baton of a conductor,
Let winds hug the housecorners and woodsmoke
Sweeten the world with her invisible dress,
Let the cricket wind his heartspring
And draw the night by like a child’s toy.

Let the tree stand and thoughtfully consider
His presence as its leaves dip and row
The long sea of winds, as sun and moon
Unfurl and decline like contending flags.

Let blackbirds quick as knives praise the Lord,
Let the sparrow line the moon for her nest
And pick the early sun for her cherry,
Let her slide on the outgoing breath of evening,
Telling of raven and dove,
The quick flutters, homings to the green houses.

Let the worm climb a winding stair,
Let the mole offer no sad explanation
As he paddles aside the dark from his nose,
Let the dog tug on the leash of his bark
The startled cat electrically hiss,
And the snake sign her name in the dust

In joy. For it is he who underlies
The rock from its liquid foundation,
The sharp contraries of the giddy atom,
The unimaginable curve of space,
Time pulling like a patient string,
And gravity, fiercest of natural loves.

At his laughter, splendor riddles the night,
Galaxies swarm from a secret hive,
Mountains split and crawl for aeons
To huddle again, and planets melt
In the last tantrum of a dying star.

At his least signal spring shifts
Its green patina over half the earth,
Deserts whisper themselves over the cities,
Polar caps widen and wither like flowers.

In his stillness rock shifts, root probes,
The spider tenses her geometrical ego,
The larva dreams in the heart of the peachwood,
The child’s pencil makes a shaky line,
The dog sighs and settles deeper,
And a smile takes hold like the feet of a bird.

Sit straight, let the air ride down your backbone,
Let your lungs unfold like a field of roses,
Your eyes hang the sun and moon between them,
Your hands weigh the sky in even balance,
Your tongue, swiftest of members, release a word
Spoken at conception to the sanctum of genes,
And each breath rise sinuous with praise.

Let your feet move to the rhythm of your pulse
(Your joints like pearls and rubies he has hidden),
And your hands float high on the tide of your feelings.
Now, shout from the stomach, hoarse with music,
Give gladness and joy back to the Lord,
Who, sly as a milkweed, takes root in your heart.

(14-century  Sufi poet Hafiz)

Even

After 

All this time

The Sun never says 

To the Earth,

"You owe me."

Look

What happens

With a love like that.

It lights the

Whole

Sky.

7th poem for April

Dance

Until I had seen your face
over the firm folded fingers
of our hands
 together;

Until I had met your gaze,
strong and blue as summer,
as we stepped
together,

I knew not what I thought of you;
and after that I knew naught else
as I spun dizzy under your arm
and my world continued to whirl.

poem 6 for April

This is kind of cheating because it isn't really complete. But I'm not sure what to do with it right now. And I am thinking of my grandma, who has been asked if she was a sun worshiper because of how brown she gets in summertime. Ergo, hic est.

Summer Affair

her skin was that of one
acquainted with the sun
and theirs was no casual flirtation

Apple Pie: poem #5 for April

Apple Pie

Into the oversized silver bowl
nearly-translucent half-moons falling,
thin pieces stacking themselves haphazard.
At the first few a faint ringing
vibrates the stainless steel, as a voice
rings the guitar when it's just the right tone
Next to the bowl, discarded bits of skin
a colored-and-pale curve of debris, shaven
deftly from flesh bound for glory, like the pile
of wood and and bark by a carpenter's bench.

Scents deepening with the cutting and stirring,
first the faint, lively smell of cool fruit,
then the quiet sweet of grains of sugar
and the brown strength of ground cinnamon
and finally the heady anointing droplets
of pure vanilla, dark as midnight.

Past the white-on-white dance uniting
dry dust of wheat and salt from the sea,
the slick of lard and cold of water;
and the draping and crimping of crust
over the edge of slant sides of glass;
and past the moment the filling,
faintly colored and gathering juices,
slips and drips from bowl into pan.
Past the covering, the pricking design,
and step away for sixty minutes, until
at last the door swings down and open.

Pale brown crust, puffed and settled
around and over its treasure, breathing nectar,
the overflow-puddle of juice blackening
in the floor of the oven, dark souvenir –
and you, reeling in the rolling heatwave
heavy like summer, bee-glad, swelling with sun,
suddenly smitten with heavenly grain
and heaps of glorified fruit.

April poem #4

Subtraction

Coffee at the table where we used to sit.
The same playlist with only a few added songs,
but I am completely different. (Deborah Gilbert Ryan, Coffee Cup)

#3 for national poetry month: Paschal Paradox

Paschal Paradox

Only the one who willingly let his flesh
be flayed and forced to hang
can fall to Hades, fall with death
and lift the dead again with him.

Only the hands stretched out wide
and tortured between wood and nail
can stretch in love to those
who tore them, and restore them.

#2 for national poetry month

Holy Week

tempestuous skies
and dark, muddy earth,
the sun breaking out once in a while
to help spring the early crocuses from the prison of cold soil.

Spring Hypnosis - poem #1

It's National Poetry Month or something like that. Here is the beginning of my attempt to post even more poetry than I usually do in a month. And most of it is hopefully going to be from my own notebooks.

Warmth is curling at the air and wind is winding up
and pulling each of us inch by inch outdoors,
and sun is drawing like a magnet all the green
from underneath the soil up and outward.
And not a one of us resists the spell,
the chains compelling heart and flesh,
but we embrace the burn of this intoxication.